1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the connectorization of flat cable and, in particular, to such cable of the type having one or more arrays of rectangularly shaped conductors.
2. Background of the Invention
In many types of flat cable, such as intended for use in telephone under-carpet cable, one such cable being known as TUCC* flat cable (*registered trademark of the Western Electric Company), the conductors are often of rectangular or ribbon configuration. Such conductors are particularly advantageous in allowing a given flat cable to be fabricated with minimum thickness. This becomes of paramount importance when such cables are fabricated with multiple conductor arrays, and/or when they must be folded back upon themselves in certain under-carpet wiring applications.
Flat cables of the type in question have generally been connected to conventional solder type connectors, in particular, heretofore by first stripping the insulation from short, terminated end sections of the conductors, and then positioning them in, and soldering them to, respectively aligned U-shaped solder cups or receptacles. With the insulation-stripped ends of the ribbon conductors normally having been positioned within the receptacles heretofore in essentially the same horizontal plane as confined within the cable, i.e., with their major surfaces extending across the width dimension of the receptacles, only the upper major surface of each conductor has been exposed to the molten solder subsequently deposited within the associated receptacle. This follows from the fact that the width of each receptacle hardly ever is much greater than the width of a stripped conductor end, because of very stringent connector receptacle spacing requirements. As such, it has been very difficult heretofore to cause the molten solder to reliably flow around the edges of a given nested conductor end so as to fill the typical semi-circular void otherwise established between the underside surface of the conductor end and the immediately adjacent sidewall surface area of the connector receptacle. Moreover, because of the normally close-fitting relationship that has existed between the terminated conductors and receptacles heretofore, considerable care has also been required in carrying out the aligning and nesting operations therebetween.
Terminated ribbon-shaped conductors have also often presented a troublesome alignment problem heretofore whenever the spacings therebetween have not corresponded to the spacings of the connector receptacles (or contacts of any other type). Considered more specifically, a rectanguarly shaped conductor inherently exhibits a relatively high elastic modulus along its major plane. Thus, it is quite difficult to displace such a conductor, and maintain such displacement, by a predetermined amount in a direction away from its longitudinally disposed axis, while remaining in the major plane thereof.
A technique employed heretofore to connectorize an intermediate segment (as distinguished from terminating end) of a given length of flat cable, with ribbon conductors, has involved a conductor twisting operation. More specifically, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,071,289, of Robert G. Szudarek, the insulation is removed from an array of conductors along an intermediate segment of the cable, with the resulting short, exposed conductor segments then being twisted 90 degrees so as to acquire an orientation that is substantially perpendicular to the original (horizontal) orientation thereof as confined within the fabricated cable. A specially constructed conductor-shielding housing is then employed which allows longitudinally staggered access to selected ones of the twisted conductor segments through the utilization of frictionally engaging socket-type terminals.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,936,933, of K. F. Folk et al., and 3,999,289, of K. Buttner et al., constitute considerably more remote techniques concerned with re-positioning the terminated wire ends confined within a round (as distinguished from flat) cable so as to facilitate the attachment of the wires thereof to a utilization device (e.g., a connector or plug). This is accomplished by fanning out the wire ends along a common plane, with no intended twisting thereof being involved.
J. W. Meacham U.S. Pat. No. 3,015,082 discloses a remotely related plug-in busway wherein a plurality of heavy gauge strap-like bus bars have portions thereof twisted 90 degrees so as to provide male-female plug-in access thereto in high power electrical system applications. Such a busway, of course, in no way suggests a solution to the problems described hereinabove that are involved in terminating and preferably solder-securing the ends of one or more arrys of minute, and fragile, ribbon-like conductors of a flat, flexible cable to a mating miniaturized connector.